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grace

This is just a small bit of verse that came to me as I prayed that the Lord would use this year as he pleases. Undoubtedly amateur in terms of poetry, but I’d thought I’d share anyway, since the sentiment is sincere, if nothing else.

Thursday afternoon, we had a table set up in a park a few blocks away from the Glasgow church, covered in Gospel literature of all varieties — different sources, challenges, and entire Bibles as well. One of the team stayed behind at the table to engage anyone that stopped by, and the rest of us dispersed about the area to talk to passers by. My partner and I grabbed a stack of tracts and remaining invitations to the Q and A that night.
We took a busy stretch of sidewalk across from the park and our main table. Sadly, we didn’t get many people interested in discussion. It was mostly, “Hello, would you like one?” and handing them an invitation before they could say no. There were a few “I’m not religious”, “I’m an atheist.”, plus several mocking comments, but nothing substantial. The most interesting part came later, just before the Q and A session began.
It was 30 minutes before the scheduled starting time, and our Glasgow leadership sent us out after dinner for a quick second round of community outreach and handing out invitations. We handed one man a leaflet and he looked down at it, reading over the content.
“Is this about the Bible?” He asked.
We answered that yes, it would be an open Q and A where you could ask any questions about the Bible, God, or Christianity in general. He nodded.
“I have questions.” He muttered, almost to himself, but then he continued. He told us about his best friend, who died young years ago. The pain of the loss caused him to question quite a few things, namely the purpose of human suffering and of life in general. It seemed our conversation was stiring up some of those questions again. Disturbed by their reemergence, he moved to leave, but I called after him, pointing out that the Q and A would be a wonderful place to start looking for answers to these old quandaries, and said we would be happy to walk with him there now if he liked.
We asked whether he had ever found solutions. He responded that no, he hadn’t. He just accepted that that’s the way life was… tragedy happens, and the best thing one can do is to live life to the fullest, be good and work hard.
“So you think this life is it?” My partner wondered, “THere’s nothing else after?”
“Yeah,” He said, sadly, “I think this is pretty much all there is.”
It didn’t sound convincing to me, and I don’t think he was convincing himself either. We encouraged him to come to the meeting a third time, but he refused. He couldn’t think about it, he said, the questions. They were too painful, and our probing had brought up all the grief from his loss all over again. He did stay to get our names, and we asked whether he would mind if we prayed for him. He seemed touched at this, and requested that we please do.
It was another apparently empty, but strangely encouraging conversation. Knowing the questions he did have, and hearing the pain in his voice, I was heart broken that he still would not come along to the meeting… Even so, I knew that it was a fruitful exchange in that he has, at least, started asking those questions again, and maybe if he continues, he can find some true answers this time.